Having worked in 1:1 schools and seen phone use / laptop has in the classroom this seems a step in the right direction. Tech is not the answer to everything in education it is just a useful tool that can and should be used from time to time like. Like a calculator but a more versatile.
What we have in many classrooms is a tech nightmare where tasks are digitized for just the sake of digitizing and attention span is lost, deep learning and concentration is lost and meaning relationships between student / student or student / instructor are diminished.
> What we have in many classrooms is a tech nightmare where tasks are digitized for just the sake of digitizing
I am glad that my child has been able to go to a school that only uses computers for tasks that can't practically be done otherwise (CAD for 3d printing, move editing, etc). Everyting else has been analog. Real books, real paper, writing by hand (cursive, even). Zero cell phones in elementary school by any kid. This is in silicon valley, so every kid has one or both parents in tech, so there is broad understanding of how problematic it is to let it dominate over the real world.
Recently I got in to mechanical typewriters for writing. I really like them! It's fascinating to have a machine which has no apps, no screen, no internal memory, and no distractions. You don't even have to "print" your page after writing it as the printing and the typing are the same operation.
The other day I was writing poetry at my computer and I had a Slack message pop up. I immediately clicked on it and responded, and then I went back to my poem and had totally lost my train of thought.
I am not suggesting schools use typewriters, but I wonder if there is value in considering limited functionality devices for specific classes in schools and similar situations.
> Having a separate device for separate tasks, can often be quite useful.
This is what I have done ever since I could afford to own more than 1 laptop and I phased out Windows (XP). I have a device that I use for a daily driver, and 3-4 other Linux distros on other laptops (various X series thinkpads), 1 Windows machine and a Mac. Each does one to two specific tasks and nothing else.
It's actually rather formidable solution and while I've tried running virtual machines its just not the same. Intuitively typing on an external keyboard on my daily driver X1 means I'm going into code mode and occasionally will look (but almost never post) at StackOverflow or HN. When I'm on the native keyboard I just respond to emails and browse/post here.
I have many devices, I will admit, but the truth is that its older stuff so the cost relative to one new machine is about the same for all I have excluding peripherals; a new X1 Carbon is like 2k these days with little to no changes to previous generations.
We learned typewriter in school, I think it was around 85-89. Most of the typewriters where completely mechanical and to erase you either had a fluid you painted over the character to delete, waited for a few seconds to dry and then could type over. Or you used a small piece of paper that had a white sticky backside. You pressed the go-back-button and then typed the letter that you wanted to erase while holding the paper in front of the paper.
We also had a slightly more modern typewriter that was electric and had memory for a few characters, automating the delete function by switching to an erase-ribbon and hitting the right key for you.
And some of the typewriters even had two colors you could switch between. Oh the memories :-) That is one class that I still have use for every day. Can't say that about many of the others.
But it forces you to think and then write, instead of the other way around, by adding more cost to mistakes. As foe handwriting there have been studies that showed that handwritten notes are better memorized rhan computer-written ones.
> studies that showed that handwritten notes are better memorized rhan computer-written ones
I don't care that I look weird, but I still take a notebook (as in a physical notebook) to meetings and take notes by hand.
With rare exceptions, I never read those notes. But by writing them, I remember it, so I don't need to. Whenever I've experimented with taking notes on the computer, I can't remember any of it.
That's right. I use them for personal journals, where I can just use the X key to write over typos and then rewrite the word. If a high standard of presentation is not required, it's easy to write with.
If you have kids, do! They will be amazed about the old tech :-) Took mine out last spring and the daughter was all "Oooh!", "Hahah", "I want!". Ofcourse it's just standing in a corner forgotten now but it was fun for a day :-)
This. I did the same thing with my kids a couple of years ago, and the youngest one really took a liking to it, to the extent that she (At 7 years of age) insist on handing in the occasional schoolwork typewritten.
After trying it out a little, she settled into a rather efficient workflow, drafting her homework in pencil, then typing it up once she'd figured out what to write and what layout she wanted.
During the process of replacing old processes with new ones, it’s hard to know what aspects of the traditional process (in this case, books and writing) are more valuable than understood. It seems like we are making a step in the right direction, but I wonder how we will prevent ourselves from making this and similar mistakes in the future.
> I wonder how we will prevent ourselves from making this and similar mistakes in the future
Just listen to the teachers, parents, and students. In high school I was among the last year groups to be pen and paper. All the younger students had laptops and iPads. I distinctly remember during the change that very few people thought it was a good idea, except for those students who got a free laptop or iPad out of it. I imagine the change was mostly brought about by administrators and politicians.
> I imagine the change was mostly brought about by administrators and politicians.
They are a specific type of “influencer”. People who claim the crown of “innovation” simply by jumping on the hype train of whatever the new hot thing is. Many companies are falling into this trap with AI right now. They use FOMO to get leaders with weak wills and a lack of vision to jump on the hype train, forcing everyone else along for the ride.
> They use FOMO to get leaders with weak wills and a lack of vision to jump on the hype train, forcing everyone else along for the ride.
In the meantime psychology is... err... What actually are psychology peoples doing ?? Do not see anything good or useful. You know, popularizing BASIC knowledge helps many, including future thing in discussion practicioners... Or psycho peoples are limiting themselves to just making money ?
It's not the tech itself that is the problem, and I think viewing it as the problem would lead one to miss a key trio of problems, that is equally applicable to books.
The problem has three interrelated parts: a) we do not value developing the capacity to think, b) the ability to think is not valued (by whom? I'm not quite sure), and c) we do not value doing things slowly.
a) Most have the mistaken notion that the capacity to think is fixed with respect to various biological factors. Putting aside whether the biology truly does fix this (I do not know enough here) the fact remains that this misses that there exist tools which can help us organize our thinking so that it appears to be "better". Examples of this are plenty in mathematics, where the symbolic "language" you use alone can make a massive difference to your "ability" to deal with a problem.
Some tools are more like internal narratives: if one develops a narrative that isn't constantly judging whether they are "thinking fast enough" or are "being productive enough" they ironically end up thinking more effectively.
(For examples of people interested in making such tools better known:
And some tools are simply more biological: a person in good physical health can think more clearly than a person for whom this is not true, for the simple reason of nutrient supply to the brain being more efficient in the former than the latter.
There's also what our culture tends to portray in entertainment. Contrary to what other think, I think entertainment is not harmless enjoyment due to the nature of our brain: as far as I know, there is no good way to consciously choose the weights you are applying to various inputs, while receiving that input (unless, ironically, you have training). Advertisers realize this, which is why "product placement", or "paid" narrative tweaking (presenting a story that is "cleaned up") work.
But more importantly, our entertainment industry does a terrible job of showing what is actually beautiful and exciting about problems in the real world. Instead, it defaults to shooting bullets, and adrenaline driven excitement. In a "biopic" about a scientist, it cares not about the immense beauty of their patient struggles, or what habits they purposefully cultivated in order to think more effectively, and instead prefers to view their achievements through a dramatic lens of romance and "lightning bolts of inspiration".
It is just as easy to put such entertain in the form of a book (e.g. Sherlock Holmes).
b) my contention that the ability to think is not valued, and perhaps actively devalued, is due to the fact that people are very willing to pollute information highways and entertainment feeds, in order to make profits. They are willing to distract people constantly from things they would prefer to be doing. They are willing to interrupt with needless reminders and notifications. They are willing to use Skinner Boxes to keep a person engaged regardless of what their conscious mind is interested in. Most importantly, they are willing to pay thoughtful people to figure out the best ways to do this: https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/10/20/the-scientists-who...
This is why technology is so disruptive. It is not usually designed to prioritize our ability to think, but is instead designed for other purposes. Which common place operating can you point to which has in-built tools to help a person manage over-use, or help a person track their time usage, or help someone stick to their goals around usage, or provides notifications in order to help a person get back on task? How many Skinner Boxes exist that around getting people to stick it out over the long term and engage with difficult material? (Most mathematics textbooks would be better as games.)
None. The issue could equally exist with, and without books. Dilution of quality of information, misinformation, de-focusing information: none of those ideas are tied to a particular medium.
c) To create something new that is truly valuable is time consuming. You cannot be overly prideful and expect to just "disrupt" things. You need to understand fairly well what the old process was, and work with people who use the old process. Perhaps even hire them as parts of the product-testing loop. You need to spend time thinking about the design, or employ people who are willing to do this. You need to spend time maintaining things, rather than just making the next new thing, yet you also need to be able to realize that "backwards compatibility" is not productive for humanity (who does backwards compatibility truly serve well? why are their wants prioritized).
None of these are ideas that are common in tech. So, the products the tech industry produces are for $$$ are overall, pretty likely to be garbage. But again, there is nothing unique about this to technology as it stands today: mass production, thoughtless production...these can be problems in any industry, and are problems in other industries too (e.g. the building industry).
I don't think the students will do better only because they are spending more time handwriting or reading books.
“And some tools are simply more biological: a person in good physical health can think more clearly than a person for whom this is not true, for the simple reason of nutrient supply to the brain being more efficient in the former than the latter.”
Most important learning aid: easily-available, nutritious breakfast and lunch. Quit fooling around with school lunch accounts and debt, financial qualification for free or reduced-price meals; just feed the kids decent food.
Hungry, malnourished kids can’t begin to concentrate. Disadvantaged American kids aren’t (usually) short of total calories, but they are often short of good food available at the right times. Good meals at home require more money and/or time and thought. Little home economics programs throughout the school years would be both good academic opportunities (apply those fractions we’ve been working on, see what baking soda does when it meets an acid) and cultivate the thinking that makes cooking at home an easier routine as an adult.
Second-most important: physical activity that doesn’t feel like a punishment. This is trickier.
Re: food, I don't disagree, but how do we get decent food? It's hard enough to find decent food if you're an adult. For example: sugar is commonly used in the food industry to help make everything taste better, including savoury food! This is not yet something I have confirmed, but I suspect also that most food comes from farms that cannot provide nutritious vegetables, fruits, eggs, or milk due to exhausted soils and poorly fed (and cruelly kept) animals. In the second case: apart from the incredible cruelty, how nutritious do you think the milk of factory cows, or the eggs of factory chickens, if they themselves, are not healthy? Similarly, how do we know that plant produce that comes from farms that tend to grow only one type of crop still meets nutritional standards? Is anyone measuring? Would love to get some clarification on this.).
Re: physical activity. It might be easier than food because of the above concerns, because it is much more within our control?
We're helped out in part by the fact that physical exercise feels good.
The issue is that the way physical exercise is presented in school tends to be through competition and/or sports. From here, and due to other signals being received, it's not hard for kids to develop immense self-consciousness which makes it something they wish to avoid.
Kids also don't learn to combine meditation and physical exercise. Meditation to help manage the social anxiety, and to help manage the physical discomfort. Yoga is surprisingly simple (no equipment required) yet effective for maintaining flexibility, posture, and strength, while also being easily amenable to incorporating meditation.
For cardiac health: there is little science employed in helping a student gradually improve their physical capacity, in a gradual fashion. HIIT is some of the best we know of for time-efficient exercises that also naturally take into account personal limits. How do you know you've done enough HIIT for the day? You're panting hard. You've hit your goal, your body will do the rest. Tolerance for discomfort improves hand-in-hand with improvements to self-image, and increased cardiac fitness. Before the student knows it, it isn't "awful drudgery" to consider doing a "12 minute run". Because they've gradually prepared for it!
The physical activity has to be fun which is very individual so to each their own. This is usually done my forcing the kids to do all of them in school and hope something sticks for their rest life.
It is little more complex than that there are especially elenentary school stuff which you need to learn doing mechanically(reading, simple Matt etc) and for those games migh be better than pen and paper. Lets put it this way if you need think about reading you are not probably thinking what you are reading.
As a Swede with toddlers (2 and 3 years old) in preschool I salute this. Preschools are required by law to use tablets in the "education" of toddlers, which is completely insane since more and more research are saying that using screens as a small child might disturb cognitive development.
Call me old school but I think toddlers should play with sticks and balls.
Side note: the general view in Sweden is that the school is working terrible and many parents do all they can to teach their young childs to read, write and count because they don't trust the school system to do that for them. I think it's great to teach your kids as much as you can, but it's a bit sad that the reason is this one.
> the general view in Sweden is that the school is working terrible
It's quite universal to find that schools in your own country are terrible :)
Having lived (and raised children) in multiple countries, I can tell you I've never seen a country where people would say good things about their own education systems
Not sure why... probably simply because everybody has (good !) ideas on how it could be better, but they are not easy to implement ! :). Probably also because that's really something people care about
Yes, my childrens preschool was awesome but at the same time I did wonder why the need for tablets at such a young age. One reason stated was that it was a matter of equality, parents who could not afford tech means their children are at a disadvantage later on when they dont know how to use... touchscreens I guess? :)
Classic socialism approach. Make everyone equally worse off. Frankly I'd rather move country than give my 2yo a tablet. And if I'd learn I have to by law well that'd just reinforce my conviction.
Any idea if this ludicrous situation is the same in Norway, Finland, Denmark?
while i do agree mindless screen time on children is/may be damaging; i think there is a huge difference in using a tablet/laptop as a modern version of a notebook vs. using to watch Youtube Kids with Ads in between etc.
My guess is it's not technology per se that's the problem but that it gets used primarily to make the teacher's life easier and substitute for them giving lessons and feedback.
Also, ed-tech built by the lowest bidder is always going to be crap. Imagine "learning" as a kid in the same way that corporate training is done.
I think this is the right move, even if it's technically solvable to provide good tech-heavy education, I don't see it as practically possible.
> “We believe the focus should return to acquiring knowledge through printed textbooks and teacher expertise, rather than acquiring knowledge primarily from freely available digital sources that have not been vetted for accuracy,” said the institute, a highly respected medical school focused on research.
Why were schools using unvetted materials in the first place!?
> it's not technology per se that's the problem
That said, handwriting practice is correlated to developing fine motor skills, which are documented to be in decline in children in a number of countries. Excessive time with (touch)screens is terrible on that front.
My son could print perfectly legibly about age 7, then the schools tarted forcing letter shapes that were far harder to read with loops and smears etc.
His handwriting then devolved into a spidery mess which was impossible to read, which meant that marks started slipping.
Joined up handwriting is a disgusting unrequired curse on society. If you want to do "beautiful calligraphy" (unreadable scrawl) that's fine, have an optional class.
I had perfectly joined up handwriting by that same age. They should've let your son continue to use his perfectly legibly print but that doesn't mean that calligraphy is necessarily unreadable, just that your son was bad at it.
The cursive hand they taught when I was in elementary school was just ugly as sin and hard to read. Has a name, I forget, it’s the one that’s been standard in most US schools for decades, all linked up loops and curves, hardly a straight line in sight. I read once that it looks a ton better and the strokes are better-motivated if you’re using a nib pen, because lots of the back sides of loops get a thinner line which improves legibility, and the style helps orient the nib the right way as you go, which I hope is the case because otherwise I have no clue why anyone would have ever liked it or selected it to teach children
I’ve seen tons of others that are simpler, closer to print writing, and much easier to read (fewer extra loops and hoops on letters, crap like that) and I wish they’d taught us one of those, if they had to teach us cursive.
Last time this was discussed on HN, I was surprised how 'loopy' the standard American handwriting style taught in schools was.
In Britain it's much less fancy [1]. It's also normal to use a fountain pen from around age 7 — at least, I did in the 1990s, and they're still widely sold in shops. These examples seem to be pencil and a rollerball pen though.
(For more images, search "joined up writing primary school" as young children don't often use the word "cursive".)
I had this issue growing up, except it was cyrillic. Reading cursive cyrillic is its own beast of an undertaking, but writing it is hell on earth and I wouldn't wish it upon by greatest enemy. They'd even refuse to grade anything handed in in non-cursive, which never made sense to me because doesn't it fucking suck to attempt to grade those papers when it's all just very long squiggles? Seriously the letters šćčti and Dž all look identical in cursive, and many words have a lot of words have these letters one after the other so you just end up with loop after loop, it's ridiculous
Fast forward a decade and I can barely read cursive cyrillic anymore and I definitely can't write in cursive, thank god.
Did you also have to use a fountain pen for that? I did. It was a nightmare, considering we could allow only the cheap pens and I’m not even sure if there were any better ones in regular stores.
For completely unrelated reasons though I had been practicing my handwriting some time ago. I greatly improved in it and even developed several different handwritings. It’s fun.
Yeah, I honestly don't see the point of learning one set style as long as the letters are sufficiently legible. I would rather see children try out a few types of handwriting/multiple letter forms per letter and let them pick what they find appealing and can reproduce legibly and quickly letter by letter.
Is he left handed? I had a similar experience, being left handed writing cursive at 2nd grade at 7-8 caused me to almost fail by 3rd grade (my parents switched me to a private learning disability school…which was super easy).
Not the OP but depending on where you live - people have a different interpretation of history and may not agree on all the various educational texts out there.
I think what they might be implying is that electronics make it very easy for teachers to rely on potentially inaccurate sources on the internet. Rather than that there aren't vetted sources that are acceptable to use (there probably are).
I somewhat tend to agree, assuming that the quality of teachers in Sweden is comparable to my own experience. In hindsight many teachers I had (especially for earlier grades) weren't likely to be better than the average rando taken off the street when it comes to vetting the material they use.
Only upon getting to university did it finally seem like the free/open source materials some professors liked to use were vetted.
> Why were schools using unvetted materials in the first place!?
Maybe to train the kids in vetting materials themselves? Seems like an important skill. It's incredible that in school you're never confronted two contradictory sources of information and have to decide which is right.
All of school is structured around the fact that there is about one teacher per 30 students. Of course teachers will use tech as a way to reduce their own burnout. We know how to make a much better school: more competent teachers and more of them, ideally so that each student has a ton of one-on-one time with teachers daily. Whether books are paper or writing is by hand is really insignificant consideration compared to all the other shortcomings of school.
Thankfully every student will soon have a very knowledgeable, perfectly patient and available teacher: ChatGPT. At first I was skeptical schools will use them, since they don't tend to understand technology very well, but I think some schools will see the potential to relieve the pressure on their teachers and others will follow when they see the positive outcomes for students.
If allowed, ChatGPT will also allow teachers to spend less time on administrative tasks, which is one of the reasons why they're so burned out in the first place.
> My guess is it's not technology per se that's the problem but that it gets used primarily to make the teacher's life easier and substitute for them giving lessons and feedback
I think this is highly likely given what they are cutting back on is “independent online research.”
For me, writing on paper provides insights that I just don’t get from a computer.
Writing outside the lines, doodles and swirls on the edges as I ruminate. Adding geometric borders around certain areas, arrows pointing at important things. Leaning in to add a tiny side-note…
I still always program at work with paper and pen on one side of my keyboard. It’s a bit like a mental clipboard for me. It also gives me another reason to get my eyes off the screen for a bit.
Interestingly I’ve never found writing helpful. I do better typing out my thoughts and writing samples etc. I’ve really tried because people who find writing useful have such great experiences. I even took copious notes in school because everyone said how useful it was. I never referred to them and eventually stopped and just paid close attention. I don’t whiteboard, I don’t jot down ideas, I am just able to keep things in cache and render them in documents, code, and diagrams. I think different minds work differently.
My challenge with standardized learning models is they work for those they work for, and cut down and ground down those it doesn’t. Then the beneficiaries write the rules for the next generation oblivious to the possibility that their experience isn’t the only one. I really struggled in American public school which is rife with learning style assumptions. I really hope a time comes when neurodiversity is accepted in public education, but until then I’ll keep sending my daughter to a private school that adopts a differentiated teaching style.
That's such a cool thing the way you describe it. I honestly wish I was that way. But for me, my most direct connection to expressing thought is a keyboard connected to a capable text editor. I remember trying to take notes by hand in college, and finding that it was easier for me to type in org-mode (mainly so I could write equations in latex, but not deal with latex outside of that).
I've never been a person who doodles. I may underline or highlight, but that's about it. I keep trying hand journaling and handwritten note taking. I'm not particularly slow or sloppy, but it just doesn't click the same way as the keyboard.
It's been a few years since I had to deal with a coworker who likes to draw random stuff on a board or a piece of paper, insisting that it is essential for everyone to watch. I never do, as I have learned that guys like this consistently provide the worst explanations because they tend to focus on their drawings, which they like.
I realise this isn't what you said, of course. Maybe you don't do this.
I wonder what actually moving your hand to draw the characters does for the brain and associating the characters meaning. I definitely feel writing by hand is more intimate and it’s easier to think, but I’m a lot slower to write and my hand cramps often.
This is the niche that the ReMarkable tablett is trying to fill - all* of the interface benefits of paper, and all* of the syncing/etc benefits of digitization.
I don't personally own one, but one thing that the ReMarkable tablet fails to do is replicate the speed of flipping through paper. It's still somewhat slow.
As long as schools allow to store books in their buildings...
I keep seeing (in Europe) kids with school bags full of notebooks and books that easily weight 4-5 KG. That's not healthy. The problem I see is that kids have homework that require the books at home, but then teachers use the books at classroom... so, they need to carry them here and there.
That’s not unhealthy, that’s good! Carry a moderately heavy bag to and from school is hardly difficult, or shouldn’t be, and that sort of weight will be from larger books meaning older children anyway. We have an obesity crisis in most countries - now is not the time to worry about older children/teenagers carrying a couple kilos for a short period each day.
I cannot remember a single person complaining about a heavy rucksack when I was in school a decade ago - by 13 we had CCF so had to go hiking with much heavier bags on the weekends. At 15.5 you can join the military schools and you’ll be carrying 25kg. This shouldn’t be a worry unless you’re physically disabled or something. Duke of Edinburgh involves hiking 13k a day with all your camping equipment and food at 12 years old over a weekend. Etc…
You'll not solve obesity by forcing them to carry books. On the other hand you can create some deformations on their spinal cord, esp if weight is not distributed correctly.
If you want to solve obesity, invest in education about healthy food and how to cook it, since usually bad food is the reason or extra calories
I wager more children get issues from bad posture on computers than carrying a mildly heavy bag from class to class… Honestly to me the worry of children’s backs carrying a couple textbooks is the epitome of the ‘nanny state’. Say a child has five different classes in a day, that will be five textbooks, some notebooks, a pencil case, and a packed lunch. Maybe also sports clothes. If a child can’t carry that (and I’m thinking 7+ here, but realistically you carry larger text books later in your school life) then they have some health issues already.
If they do have health issues accommodations should be made of course! But the vast majority can carry a couple books.
I agree fighting obesity is not going to be solved by carrying books BUT I think this attitude towards coddling children is partly responsible, along with food as you mention which is also very important.
Edit: Just so this isn’t anecdotal points, here’s a survey that found no evidence backpacks cause issues in children https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/19/1241
For the first several years (here in Silicon Valley, CA) my kids had little to no content in their school bags (grades K-4). Then they had some stuff and we thought it'd be best if they got roller bags. Now they're in middle school and the roller bags are full and weigh 10kg+ it seems. Insane. I want them to ride their bikes to school but with this weight it would only happen with rear-racks and panniers. Sigh.
Do they actually need everything? Some kids tend to hoard all their school papers when it could be cleaned out and put in an archive binder/folder at home.
Does the curriculum require they carry textbooks in daily?
> However, there is still no clear information about the impact that a school backpack has on the formation of spinal curvature in the sagittal plane in school children.
The next sentence following the stats quoted from the link.
> However, when the child begins to attend school, their time spent in a sitting position is extended, which can result in disorders of posturogenesis.
5 kg is only a couple of textbooks. Teens need to pick what books to take home. Obviously digital is free weight, but physical textbooks have a real weight cost, I don’t want my kid going through what I had to go through.
If we take a young child weighting 20-30 kg, 5 kg would be 1/4th to 1/6th of body mass... 15-20 kg or 10-15kg carried daily by adult is not a light load. And children have less developed bodies.
I wouldn't be surprised if 25kg kids would need to carry 5kg bags.
When I was a teen, I had to carry 10kg and I am sure I wasn't over than 35kg at that time. I was particularly slim but not as slim as some kids I am seeing today.
25kg is the average weight of a 7 year old girl, so I think it’s fair to say the youngest lightest average child in school.
Id be interested what Grade 1 girls are carrying around that’s totalling 5kg - that’s three hardcover undergrad physics textbooks lol. And even if they do combine to 5kg, there’s no evidence it causes any harm to children!
I've spent a lot of time hiking and backpacking. I've also had to walk five miles home (that's about 8km for those not in insane countries that start with "United") when buses or trains were cancelled due to weather.
I absolutely refuse to buy a backpack without a hip belt of some sort, because while you might not really need it for the five-minute walk from the bus stop or train station to the office, that changes when you're carrying it for a two-hour walk in the snow.
How will you study books or notes for homework, if they are at school? I admit that we had a lot of school books to carry when I was young and I occasionally got a sore neck from lugging them around, but I wouldn't call it especially unhealthy. You anyway don't have that many school books until ages 13 and up here (Finland), and by that time you are perfectly capable of carrying things.
Usually this could be solved with a "home copy" for each kid, then "classroom copies" for kids to use in class. Kids still carry their notes, but those weigh a small fraction of what hardback textbooks do.
Personally I found soldering taught me fine motor control. But my family has genetically bad hand writing being a bunch of surgeons - who can’t write worth a damn but have super human fine motor control.
I would note of the things you listed: pen, paper, good teacher, almost all the alpha is associated with the teacher. And while the pen and the paper can be bought, a good teacher is only born.
I have excellent fine motor control in both hands. I can use knives, a mouse, scissors or solder with either hand, yet I have struggled- suffered!- with handwriting since forever.
Handwriting is one of those things I seem to have an argument with my son (he’s 10). And it isn’t about him having that specific skill. But it’s about having a sense of pride in your work and not half-assing things.
But my wife and I struggle to get anyone to agree with us. The teachers don’t seem to care (which my son is happy to relay to me).
Other parents say why bother, it’s an outdated skill (I actually disagree, even though my handwriting is often bad from lack of practice, when I do fill up forms by hand, I understand the importance of legibility).
But again, to me it is symptomatic of a larger issue where I feel that more and more, kids are not taught to have a sense or standard in the quality of their work and improve upon it, regardless of the particular skill.
I still remember my grandfather telling us, everything you do, you must strive to do it well. It was about having pride in your work.
Am I alone in this? Looking for a good counterpoint.
You one-sidedly pick a skill for someone else, that they don't enjoy and don't find useful and that you can't reasonably justify as being useful.
Then you insist that they do it well.
But that's not enough - you also insist that they have to want to do it well.
Which you also can't justify, other than very abstractly, by insisting that everything they do - including things they didn't choose themselves, don't care about, don't find useful and won't actually find useful - they should want to do well.
I'd be more worried for someone who didn't find that preposterous.
Being able to hold a pen in your hand and write a note that looks legible is a fundamental skill. One should be able to write a message on a card that does not make the recipient want to puke or at least wonder if whether the author survived what looks like an obvious stroke. It’s a matter of self respect.
The contention is not about whether or not kids should be taught to write at all, but rather that if it makes sense to insist on putting more emphasis on developing the skill beyond the minimum needed to convey things in a casual setting.
Personally I feel that people who associate poor handwriting with a lack of self respect or a lack of interest in their work are being too judgemental. It isn't really meaningful that their grandfather, who grew up in a time when handwriting was the only option when not seated at a desk, thought clear handwriting was a matter of respect. To put the extent of the fundamental cultural change in perspective, in a class I was teaching earlier today, there was an incident of many students asking others for pens to sign an attendance sheet with because even if they do handwrite their notes, it's with a digital pen. Even I hadn't carried or owned a regular pen in many years, having only about a year ago bought some and decided to keep them in places I might need them so I don't have to go digging in the handful of times a year that I might actually need one.
Then there's the other issue that comes with making anything a matter of respect, where, as a child I had ended up with a somewhat 'custom' writing style that was a mix of both cursive and print due to frequently moving between countries which taught things differently. It was easily legible while still being fast enough to take notes with, but because it wasn't the "respectable" style, I got plenty of grief from teachers at the school even though they too insisted that any assignment of actual value be typed up and the handwriting was only for classroom notes which would end up in the bin at the end of the year anyway.
It's fine if you want to try to encourage your child to improve the quality of their handwriting, but telling them that they need to do it for respect is, in my opinion, an outdated idea on par with the previously common ideas about how being a lefty needed to be 'corrected'. Wanting to teach them to take pride in their work is good too, but, pride in one's work comes from the quality of the work, of which the handwriting is an increasingly miniscule part. A doctor shows pride in their work by providing the most effective care for their patients, not by writing an especially legible note.
But how is it working for exams, they are not digital here in Germany. And I had the most problems in my life at university because of my bad handwriting. Especially when nervous I had to do so many exams involving a lot of writing, which was horrendous. But I am also left-handed, forced to write right-handed in elementary school. After my Bachelor's I started to write left-handed. What a relief. But really, exams are the only reason I think it is still important to have a good handwriting. Nowadays at work I need it for white-boarding. Where even a good skill in sketching is useful.
>I still remember my grandfather telling us, everything you do, you must strive to do it well. It was about having pride in your work.
You aren't alone, but I think this is terrible advice. You should figure out what you want to do and find the best way to do it. The best way will probably involve half-assing a lot of stuff, since you only have a finite amount of time/energy.
I had a teacher at school who used to say "if it's worth doing then it's worth doing properly", but he mainly said it about things that weren't worth doing.
Relating to this, a big realization for me was in highschool when I was given the advice by an elder sibling that I didn't need to try to do everything perfectly if I had other important things to do. Eg. it's okay to take a small hit on one class's grade by skipping a weekly homework assignment if it means being able to focus on the term end project from another class.
In hindsight it seems kind of obvious, but I was so used to the parental pressure to just do everything perfectly from my earlier years that it had never occurred to me to prioritize. Although I suppose it does still require you to have a mature sense of priorities, since skipping all assignments to party every day is obviously not healthy.
I take pride in all of my work, but at this point, as a PhD student, if I put my 100% into everything, I'd have to forgo even sleep. I have to figure out which tasks are more important and which I can hand off to others or simply ignore because my supervisor probably won't even remember asking me to do them in a week.
> "if it's worth doing then it's worth doing properly"
Big life lesson for me was "if it's worth doing then it's worth doing poorly" Even if it's more worthwhile doing it a little better (and once done poorly you can work toward that if it makes sense).
I always liked this quote on officers which has been attributed to dozens of different generals throughout history:
> I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.
This never made sense to me. Being intelligent and hard working is (to me) obviously better than being intelligent and lazy. The latter just thinks great thoughts, but does nothing about them.
The idea is that the intelligent lazy person will find a simpler and better way to do things, while the hard working one just powers through doing it the usual way.
Like this story that makes the rounds once in awhile. Who knows how true it is but..
"Due to complexities in their manufacturing line, a popular toothpaste company would occasionally, accidentally, ship empty boxes to their customers.
Not only did the boxes cost money to ship, but when customers received the boxes they would often complain. Ultimately the toothpaste company began to lose customers who would seek out inventory for their stores from other, more reliable suppliers.
One day the factory gathered their top managers and creative minds and told them they would need to focus their efforts on solving the empty box problem.
After nearly six months and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on research and ideation, the factory came up with what they thought was a fairly smart smart solution to their problem. They would add highly sensitive scales to the factory line.
Any time an empty box would reach the scale it would be weighed, the line would stop and a loud buzzer would sound, at which point a factory worker would need to walk over and remove the empty box. Problem solved, right?
Yet the company quickly ran into another issue: just a few months after rolling out the new scale system there were no empty boxes being reported. The scales weren't encountering any empty boxes at all.
Confused by the results, the factory manager traveled down to the factory from his city office to see what was going on. He noticed that by one of the supply lines, just a few feet before one of the new scales, someone had placed an inexpensive desk fan. The manager noticed that as boxes rolled down the line, empty ones would merely be blown off the belt by the desk fan.
When asked about the fan, an employee on the factory line standing nearby explained: "Oh that? We put it there when we got tired of hearing the buzzer ring."
Here is my insight, as it applies to managers in companies:
There is a certain type of manager who is "hardworking", which in this case probably means something more along the lines of overzealous. The overzealous manager enters the organization and starts puting processes into place that assume a bunch of "hardworking" subordinates rather than average subordinates, which most of them are (by definition). When the subordinates don't meet expectations and the process fails, the manager blames subordinates for not working hard enough, so he drives them harder, which then causes issues with morale, retention, etc. damaging the organization.
So, the "hardowrking"/overzealous manager believes problems can be solved by working harder, rather than trying to craft a process that realistically works for the average employee. The "lazy" but intelligent manager finds a way to get just enough done to satisfy business goals. The hardworking manager gets a lot done in the short term, but burns out the team in the long term. The lazy manager keeps their division humming at an unexceptional but reliable pace and keeps the business printing money.
A giant bureaucracy like the military is more concerned about reliable, predictable, fool-proof plans and execution than brilliant and gallant leadership that could backfire in the wrong circumstances. So the quote is kind of about the priorities of a large organization.
I always thought being intelligent and lazy was superior. Why waste my time doing something if I don’t have to? You can ‘clever’ your way out of a lot of hard work and get the same results.
It's important that he's talking about military officers, not random people chilling at home. There's a minimum level of results necessary if you want to avoid eventual assignment to latrine cleaning duty, and laziness drives efficiency in achieving those results.
By lazy, he meant simple. Imagine you are in charge of conscript soldiers who have been given the bare minimum of training. Your plans and orders should consist of step1, step2, and step3 and no more.
A legendary academic from my country had a favorite saying to younger researchers: "Your activity doesn't give any results; all I see is consequences."
Seems more extensively applied. e.g. If cleaning the bathroom is worthwhile then it is worth doing it badly. As opposed not at all. I'm sure someone loves cleaning bathrooms but that isn't the point.
Counterpoint to the the inner voice saying: It's not worth doing because it won't be great.
Is it terrible advice? Those are quite strong words. I don't think it is terrible. It may not be for everyone but I can surely see that such a philosophy and approach to life can be fulfilling. I think it can make you focus, do less but do it better. Quality over quantity, kind of.
In my opinion handwriting is as useless a skill as is possible. I never use my handwriting - ever. I likewise don’t churn butter, do arithmetic beyond what I can do in my head, or card yarn for my clothes.
There is nothing redeeming about artisanal hand scripting other than writing annotations on objects to label them, and even then a label maker does a better job in every dimension. Typing is a fundamental skill in the modern world, and type written text is not just considerably more legible, it’s also indexable for search etc.
Having a sense of pride is often coupled with a sense of utility and purpose. Few people feel pride in useless exercises done for rote purposes and celebration of the way it was done in the past. Some certainly do, and god bless them. But I feel more pride in my code than artisanal scribbles, in my handiwork, in my learning, etc. Kids are no different. Maybe they feel pride in their Minecraft creations. Is a complex red stone build with intricate visual designs and creative use in game not more compelling and interesting than manipulating a wood stick to make glyphs? A lot of people think the things a kid takes pride in aren’t worth taking pride in, and instead try to make them take pride in something from their own childhood.
They are misidentifying a lack of interest in your interests with a lack of pride in their work.
I grew up entirely pre-smartphone, so my education was mostly handwriting except a couple typed papers a year (and then even more handwriting in college—oh, the hand cramps on tests).
A couple months ago I had to write about five sentences by hand, and it dawned on me that that single act was probably twice as much handwriting as I’d done the entire prior two years, not counting signatures and such.
I don’t think you’re alone. And I appreciate your arguments. They’re valid, even if I disagree.
My perspective is that there is an ever growing wealth of knowledge and skills and only so much time in the day. We see this conflict in some hardcore parents who sign their kids up for an entire childhood of studies.
I think it’s deeply important to have pride in your work and to do it carefully, patiently, methodically. I’m not sure this must be practiced with any specific skill.
I think doctors are an example of how this can be at odds with reality. Do they not take pride in their work, or do they have just so much to study that they cannot afford the expense?
I think it’s also important to identify that this discussion often conflates two things: cursive handwriting and legible printing. I believe schools still endeavour to teach kids to print legibly.
> And “nobody else cares” shouldn’t be a _major_ part of that argument.
I disagree. Nobody else caring is a strong indication the skill isn't that valuable. If nobody else cares and he can't see a reason to care himself then why would he decide it's a skill he wants to put time into improving?
Tbh it sounds like your son has considered the merits and decided it's not a skill worth working on. You just disagree.
> I disagree. Nobody else caring is a strong indication the skill isn't that valuable. If nobody else cares and he can't see a reason to care himself then why would he decide it's a skill he wants to put time into improving?
Hmmm didn't think about it that way. Definitely a more practical approach.
I think you've taken it too far—it's not just that others don't care for it but that he also doesn't. Doing something that you care about but others don't isn't necessarily a waste of time.
I'm not sure I understand your position here. If he doesn't care about his handwriting, and his school doesn't care about his handwriting, what's the point of improving it?
I honestly can't think of the last time I wrote anything down except my signature, and I doubt this trend is going to reverse.
I was trying to make a bigger point (using handwriting as one example) of having an innate sense of wanting to do better quality work in whatever you do. Maybe having the entire population with bad handwriting will push us faster into digital forms.
But as many have stated, maybe I'm just a cranky old dad and things will work themselves out with things he's genuinely interested in. :-)
Writing is extremely important. First google result,
Writing is an invaluable tool for exercising our cognitive faculties. Extensive and diverse research has suggested links between writing and mental capacities in such domains as memory, critical thinking, creativity, verbal skills, and overall health.
It is a well-established fact that the mechanical act of handwriting notes is good for memorization. Perhaps it is meditative, perhaps we're just physical beings -- whatever it is, typewriting on a computer is not as good.
A famous man whose name I forget once said "Plans are useless, planning is indispensable," and I would like to paraphrase it as "notes are useless, note-taking is indispensable."
> "notes are useless, note-taking is indispensable."
This is very, very true for me. I read, optimistically, 5% of my notes.
As a corollary, I’m unable to take notes if the notepad is too fancy. I get analysis paralysis from something like a moleskine, like something this nice deserves nicely formatted notes. Only cheapo gas station notpads work for me.
Given we are at software engineering forum where most of us likely use ticket tracking system which are basically fancy notes... I feel your statement is disingenuous.
I'd add that, as someone who does articles about events and the like, it's much more efficient for me to be able to cut/paste/edit from typed material than to transcribe from my abbreviated and hard to read scrawls.
>Students may never pick up a tool again, but they will forever have the knowledge of how to make and evaluate things with your hand and your eye and appreciate the labor of others
See my other post in this discussion for a link to Kate Gladstone's site and as well as SE Briem's list of calligraphy texts.
A touchstone for me on this is John Quincy Adams' translation of Wieland's Oberon:
My third-grader here in digital Sweden started "Sloyd" woodworking class this month. Thanks for sharing these links.
The kids all have their own iPads in the classroom but they seem to be used very sparingly, mostly for extra drills occupying kids who finish their handwriting-heavy schoolwork early.
> And it isn’t about him having that specific skill. But it’s about having a sense of pride in your work and not half-assing things.
Maybe you'd have more luck teaching him the latter if you focused on skills/work that are clearly useful. Or useful to him atleast even if you disagree that handwriting is outdated.
Take pride in your work and doing it well is a useful lesson (and unfortunately not something I'm great at personally) but if he doesn't see any value in that specific work he'll never even comprehend the difference between work done well and work half-assed, never mind strive for it. All he see's is you asking him to put more effort into a pointless activity.
I reckon this is one of the reasons that sports and arts are relatively successful at teaching kids life skills like discipline. It's easier for kids to see the immediate value of being good at those than other skills, so their more motivated and lessons stick.
I always hated football myself but if he's into it look up the stories many coaches/managers tell of how they recognised future top players early on because of their discipline/work ethic. Those might inspire him more.
My son was in a school that taught English via immersion (they hired English teachers who couldn't even speak any German).
Starting with grade 1 the kids wrote exclusively with fountain pens, and were marked early on on penmanship. Except in English, where they were allowed to write with pencils or biros so of course they did because it was a change, and the teachers didn't seem to care about penmanship at all.
Two decades later his writing with a fountain pen in any language is as clear as a bell, while anything else results in a scrawl. I don't believe it's because the tool is superior in some way, I think it's simply the attention to detail got wired in.
==
An amusing nerd side point: In grade 1 they learnt a letter a week, and from that were reading by xmas. To avoid confusing the kids, English was supposed to use "German letterforms" but really they are pretty much the same! Anyway the funny thing is that in English they start the first week with "A" (Apple, Ant), then "B" (Banana, Buffalo) and so on. German was taught in the alphabetic frequency order: "E" (Elefant), then "N" (Nase), "I" (Igel) and so on. Disappointingly, Christmas came before they got to ß as I was curious what they would do (no word starts with it).
I think there is something very different about handwriting than typing. Like, listen to a lecture and write notes on a pad, and then go to the lecture the next day and type them on a computer.
Then, wait a week, and take a test without reviewing anything.
My money, based on my experience, is on you better remembering the handwritten notes. I think this is because you cannot write as fast as you type, so you have to hear, think about what is important, and summarize when handwriting. When typing, you can get almost all the words someone says typed out. So you switch to "hear-to-type" mode without thinking.
So, I think it is important for learning to have that skill. I think it is better in the real world too, for some use cases. If I am in a meeting with a counterparty, I take hand written notes. I rarely look at the notes after. Why? I remember what we talked about.
I used to bring a computer and type out notes - and I still do if I need perfect information to reference later - but when I do that, my notes take the place of my memory.
It seems more efficient to handwrite my notes and have my memory be my memory instead.
Research has shown that writing notes by hand leads to better retention than typing even if the notes are never read in the future. However, given that writing is just 7000 years old, I'm not sure how long will it take before typing to become the more natural skill (if typing does last for 7000 years that is)
I think your focus on kaligraphy is damaging to the lesson. You should pick something your son values, and teach him to drive it to perfection. Then watch him getting annoyed when you half-ass it in front of him.
All education is a crude attempt at telepathy and while repeated confrontation can transport the value you place upon a thing, it does not make it intrinsic.
Also skills are filtered for right to exist every generation. Skills become value less is a normal and even healthy thing.
it's a child. By definition it doesn't know what it values. This has seemingly been forgotten but parents have a mentorship and guiding role. Their job is to cultivate in their children interest in activities in the first place. When I was young I hated that my parents made me learn an instrument, because I wanted to play video games and eat ice cream all day. As an adult (who became a part time musician) I understand the value of it.
"do what your son wants' gets you children raised on an ipad with no education in the arts.
When I was young I hated that my parents made me learn an instrument. As an adult I still hate that they did that, there is no value in it for me. There are parents that pursue their own interests through their kids (who often can't resist), I find that objectionable.
It also destroys the ability to be intrinsic passionate and feel like you have control over your own life and actions. Its a horrible way to create people that are ideal sustinance for the societal apparatus, but bad when it comes to act in there own self-interest.
Which is why you want to work with whatever fascinates the little person. The world is filled with no backbone- will broken, sub-servient peasants already.
Handwriting is like drawing or music. Do you absolutely need it? No. But it is another mode of operation, that develops brain. Arguably, reading and writing/typing may become obsolete with next decade or two, thanks to voice interface enhanced by NN models.
I doubt that reading/writing/typing will be replaced by speech. You simply can't speak or listen anywhere near as fast as you can do any of those things.
There are other features about a piece of homework than how the handwriting appears. Is the content high quality? Did he learn? Did he do it efficiently? Did he enjoy doing it? Is it well-designed or beautiful in other ways? Etc. Your kid can feel pride about these other features of his work, some of which may be mutually exclusive with high quality handwriting! Selecting the handwriting as high priority is somewhat arbitrary on your part. I'd be concerned that you're overlooking other arguably more important signals of pride and joy in your kid's work by focusing on this one.
If you want your kid to practice high quality craftsmanship, to feel pride in a job well-done, let him choose another craft where the quality is inherently relevant, like woodworking or sewing (or calligraphy)!
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A second angle. Imagine you are trying to learn to write code and someone insisted you use a difficult keyboard: each key is a different size, they're spaced out across the desk facing different directions. (Or, say, insisted you use punch cards). You'll surely have a harder time learning to code!
You only have a limited number of hours in life to devote to acquiring mastery, and there's a nearly unlimited number of subjects that are worth mastering.
Instead of trying to be good at everything you're doing, decide what you're going to be good at, what you're going to outsource and half-ass, and work towards being good at the former, while getting by/paying other people to do with the latter.
You need to take pride in something, but you're fooling yourself if you think you can do everything well - or that its a good investment of your time.
Maybe instead of forcing him to become an expert at a skill with incredibly poor return on investment, you should drive him towards becoming an expert at... Writing.
>But again, to me it is symptomatic of a larger issue where I feel that more and more, kids are not taught to have a sense or standard in the quality of their work and improve upon it, regardless of the particular skill.
You mean so they can work 60 hours for a mediocre salary with little upwards mobility that won't even let them buy a house anymore while sinking in student debt?
Knowing when work for the sake of work is a waste of your life is a very important skill now that you can't walk into a random company Monday morning and come out with a job
I haven't seen the phrase 'critical thinking' in a long time. The concept of a standard has dropped, though kids are exposed to much more generalized criticism online than we were in school.
You can post anything online and get global feedback (at least in theory, people are silo-ing more everyday). You can see others get harsh feedback. There's youtube channels dedicated to tearing apart X Y and Z products for their flaws.
Unfortunately the internet returns most people to the mean or average, within a bell curve. There's some incredible knowledge online, but it's not enough to replace a critical university teacher leaning over your shoulder, or working under a master craftsman and enduring his continual destruction of your failed attempts. Standards are hard won.
Holding an internal standard and conscience has been subverted upvotes/downvotes and by the internet in general, in my view.
Hypotheticaly subtract internet points and approval seeking from the online world, and you'll see the idea of a individual standard re-emerge, I bet.
Edit: Handwriting is super important. Typing on keyboards has an arbitrary mapping between action and outcome. Handwriting directly connects your muscles and mind together and gives permenancy to your handiwork that forces consideration. I keep a diary, by hand. I cross out mistakes and initial them. Best habit in my life, would not trade it for the world. Any serious thoughts I need to 'get out' or improve, go there.
I hated writing as a kid. I think part of the problem was that my thoughts were much faster than my pen, so I by default wrote as fast as I could. If I tried to write more legibly, my writing would still look poor compared to many others, and I'd have to slow to a fraction of the speed, so why bother? For instance, whenever I have to write my email address on a form (you know, it has to be perfectly legible or you won't receive your email), and half the letters still look like trash.
Counterpoint: Pareto principle. For 20% of effort you get 80% of results, so you are better of 1/5ing-assing 2 things for a total of less than half the effort and more than 50% more gains.
Your grandfathers advice might have been sane back in the day when you could only do one or two things and so quickly hit diminishing returns, but today it does not matter greatly.
More emotional argument. What do you call the person who does more than they get rewarded for (over a long time?): a sucker. And who wants to be a sucker?
I once saw a documentary about Nelson Mandela. When he read a newspaper he was very careful to line up the pages and to crease the paper so it was straight and had even corners between the different pages. He did not half-ass the act of turning pages in a newspaper. It seemed like such a waste of time. How much less must he have had time to read, wasting time to turn pages like that?
On the other hand he had an incredible reputation and was admired as a leader across the world. Perhaps his attention to detail mattered even when it seemed like a waste.
Sounds like just typical OCD. Some people have to line up their notepaper and pen perfectly parallel on the desk before they're mentally able to continue past that point.
He spent twenty years in a prison. I imagine it was a habit left over from then. A slightly detrimental one, but obviously not one that set him back too much.
Handwriting is one of the easiest methods by which you can practice fine motor skills and manual dexterity.
Also, I really enjoy watching a thought literally flow out of my body onto a page. There is something very disconnected about pressing keys on a keyboard to see the words appear on a screen -- sometimes I find myself in a state of flow on a computer where it all seems to 'click', but contrast that with handwriting and I can get right into flow the instant graphite or ink meets paper.
I have recently seen some children work out things (mechanics, strategies, communication) to perfection in video games. They are incredibly perceptive critics of their own and other's performance.
They are probably much better than your grandfather at both game and meta-game, because they are standing on the shoulders of slightly larger people. They are familiar with the conventions and input methods and community and thus have a base understanding that few older people do.
Funny I used to use this argument when people used to complain to me about video games. They can be incredibly complex and utilize your brain in amazing ways.
And I actually have zero issues with him playing video games. The sports ones involve building your team, trading players, etc. That's all pretty complex stuff.
This is my own personal bias talking here but I think handwriting might be a poor subject to teach the wider lesson of taking pride in your work. My hand writing has always been terrible. It was a big deal 30 years ago (when I was at school) - it's not really been an issue since. But it's not whether it's outdated or not, it's just not something which easily improves with practice (at least, in my experience). Even when I spent a lot of time and energy trying to slowly draw individual letters the end result was still messy.
My problem was exacerbated because I sat next to a kid who was a great artist. He used to draw comic strips (at age 9-10) and the lettering looked professional (at least to my eyes). Yes if I had spent an enormous amount of time and effort I could have improved my handwriting but I don't think I'd ever be able to produce 1/5th the quality of what he did. My hand just wasn't (and isn't) that steady.
With other subjects you can spend a lot less time and improve quality a lot easier and faster. With something like code layout it's much easier to brute force tidiness in a way that just isn't possible with handwriting (or drawing).
Your son could have dysgraphia. My son (14, homeschooled) struggles with writing, and it was hard to not think of his poor writing as a result of him being lazy or not caring.
My kids have gone to a Montessori school since pre-K and those schools teach handwriting. It's not done because of how much or little the student will use that handwriting later in life but more because, early on, it helps develop fine motor skills.
Now that they're in high school, my daughter has excellent penmanship. My son... not so much. :) But! He can do it.
An alternative hypothesis is that it's done because it has always been done, and the fine motor skills thing is merely an attempt to rationalize this practice.
Depends what profession you end up pursuing. If your son pursues computer science then likely never need to use handwriting ever again. As a 10+ year software engineer I've never needed to handwrite anything professionally, not once. Personally, still like to do the occasional handwritten card or letter for friends and family.
Also turns out to be a different skill. (My old school printing is fine, my old school cursive was pretty much gone by day one of college, chalkboards are almost always slow block-printing - so when I started using whiteboards, it was all cursive patterns that were unreadable and mostly served as a vague reminder to the audience of what I said when I was scribbling over there.)
About 5 years ago I was inspired by a friend casually doing some amazing whiteboard art at work, and ended up trying a more calligraphic approach (not fancy gothic patterns, just that kind of intent/attention.) A lot slower, but a bunch of coworkers privately requested that I keep up the new approach...
Mostly don't even use those these days--basically never in an office. Collaborative docs are more common. I mean you need basic at least somewhat legible printing but that's probably fine for a lot of things these days.
Handwriting was always my worst grade in elementary school and don't really know Palmer script any longer.
Rather than argue about this, perhaps it may be better to see if you can get your son to be interested in practicing calligraphy, where the whole point of the exercise is to write in beautiful way. Otherwise, you're trying to win an argument about something that is often tangential to another goal.
You and I both have terrible handwriting. In my life, it hasn't been a hindrance to my work as a software engineer so maybe your son has a point. However, I do agree that doing things well has merit but maybe reframing it will get you farther along this goal. And lastly, maybe you can achieve the same goal through other means? Perhaps in playing an instrument or practicing some other skill. I think the value you want to teach your son is practicing something and doing it well. It doesn't need to be handwriting.
>I still remember my grandfather telling us, everything you do, you must strive to do it well. It was about having pride in your work.
This seems fairly contradictory to me. He's not choosing to do it, he's forced to learn some outdated skill. Let him excel in some useful skill, like mathematics.
45 here. I certainly didn't and don't appreciate the fact that I spent hours on Saturdays improving my cursive during early education because my writing was horrible unless I took too long to do it. I envy the younger generations.
I don't think it's a generational thing. I think it varies by family. Neither my parents nor grandparents really pushed that kind of message even though they were very focused on education. My family is Jewish-American and still have strong cultural memory of being deliberately excluded from opportunities despite effort. I absorbed it as a dual mandate to learn as much as possible and to play whatever game the schools needed you to play to get recognition.
I also had terrible handwriting despite tons of experience. Meanwhile I knew kids who wrote like typewriters from the 4th grade just due to natural talent.
Pick something more impactful. It's hard to have a sense of pride for something that will be read once and promptly shredded. Maybe share examples of how having good penmanship has helped you?
I have a good hand and enjoy writing with the gel 0.5.
Cursive was drilled into me as a child.
I will still take notes and write my thoughts out on paper. It somehow manages to provide me focus and shut out distractions. It’s also a space I can do a lot of free form thinking and tie things together.
Assists shouldn’t be given at an early age. I believe they are counter productive.
Another example. We never used calculators till 11th grade. All calculations had to be done by hand. I can still quickly approximate to know if numbers are in the ballpark.
Because it's a waste of time in an age where we have machines that can do a much better job?
The same reason we don't wash clothes on a washboard in a river anymore?
Teaching how to make pretty smudges on dead trees to store and communicate information is in the exact same bucket, to me. It's a an utterly useless and wasteful anachronism, like mechanical watchmaking or praying. Given that we have limited time, energy, and budget to educate children, it is actively harmful to their future.
Why teach them to write at all? Why teach arithmetic, just hand them a calculator. Why teach poetry? Why teach history -- if they need to know it, they can look on Wikipedia. Why offer band class, will it help you write tighter Javascript?
It's often faster to write down notes while listening than type them out, and you can make quick graphs/tables/etc without formatting hassles. Especially if you would be using a phone and not a real keyboard. That's why police always carry those little notebooks in their pocket.
Additionally, there are many cases where it's possible to type and print something, but faster to just write it. Ex. writing the address on an envelope rather than making one in Word and trying to remember which way the envelopes go into the printer (which inexplicably is the opposite of the picture on the tray).
Police carry digital video cameras now, not notebooks.
Writing is only faster if you don't know how to type, which is a useful skill that is relevant today and should be taught.
Envelopes and writing on them (and MS Word, for that matter) are more of the same last-century anachronisms. Why are we teaching new people paper-based skills at all? Paper is useless outside of visual art.
Calligraphy is a form of art, it’s not a “pretty smudges on dead trees” - what an awful way to put it really. Knowing any kind of art makes you think differently, probably “better” in a way. Not everything should be reduced to the functional level.
Everything I do in my work (Software Engineering) is about just getting it done/ getting v1.0 over the line. Not my choice, but leadership don't seem to care about things being done well so long as they're done.
Can you provide him with an example, such as a work notebook with notes taken during a meeting, or while thinking through a problem? Or a handwritten letter/card received from a close friend/partner.
Teachers don't care about handwriting anymore because handwriting is not part of standardized testing, and that is how schools and teachers are evaluated now.
Cursive handwriting was not optional, same for spelling.
Teachers would flunk people and no, there are no repeats at that school.
From 200 in kinder, only 70 finished HS
You are on the right side, find people who give a damn about education.
One advantage of giving kids laptops for schoolwork is that we won't be training a generation that can't touch-type
I am a bit serious here though, gone are the days where you were expected to learn computer skills at home. Most people don't use laptops all that much in the same manner millennials used to use desktops. So we are growing in a generation where people prefer to use touchpads instead of mouses and can't touch-type, hampering the productivity of these people unless they train themselves out of it. They have little reason to do so because it is not a 100% difference, more like a 5-30% difference depending on task
Funnily enough there is an argument to be made that a lot of millennials and older can't swipe-type in touch devices which is also valid!
I'm usually looking at people when they type on keyboards. When I was young (1985) most people that had to type, knew how to touch type. Then came a phase where it was hunt and peck when the computers showed up and everyone had to use them for work. Later you were expected to at least know the finger position even though you look at the keyboard while typing.
But I haven't had opportunity to see much people typing for a while until last year. Just last week I saw two people working at a bank not able to type numbers on the numpad without looking and using one finger. Both of them around 25. The optician could not touch type, was using a fast version of hunt and peck with three fingers total. Also around 25. But the dentists and doctors could touch-type pretty fast. All of them 40 - 60. (I started working as a personal assistant part time so see a lot of medical people, Sweden)
I don't wish they'd bring back cursive; I wish they would teach shorthand. If I would have learned shorthand in the 2nd grade, it would have made every single class I took after that better, because I could have taken much better notes.
I know Teeline shorthand, which is easier to learn than Gregg shorthand. It is fine for taking note from books or articles, but not quite fast enough to take notes from spoken language.
Interesting. My parents did all my handwriting practice when I was a child so that I could go out and play. Our school graded on exams and labs alone which I aced. My handwriting remained rubbish as I aced my undergraduate program, remained rubbish as I started work in software, and has remained rubbish as I've climbed from success to success.
Contra-other-posts, I don't think I would have learned anything of value from handwriting. Perhaps my exam scores would have been higher as some things weren't misunderstood.
I also relied on zero notes during lectures, instead finding that close attention lead to near complete recall in class, but I suffered when I tried taking notes as an experiment. My Algebraic Geometry class was a complete disaster.
Ideally, if I had to make tradeoffs, my children would be like me: with good alphanumeric and concept recall from memory. I think it is superior to note-taking.
I want my daughter (aged four) to enjoy writing by hand. It's part creative, part practical, but I also think that humans have a connection to the physical act of making things, or marks, that will take a (very) long time to go away, and that we will yearn for if we stop.
That said, I love making things, drawing, painting etc, but have terrible handwriting, and mostly hate doing it! My teachers never let me get my "pen licence", so to this day I much prefer a mechanical pencil.
Hasn't it been proved as well that writing things out by hand is the most effective way to memorize things? Wouldn't all schools want to teach this valuable tool to students?
I am a scientist and over the last years I stopped using notebooks for notes... I lost something, you connect deeper with your thoughts by writing with hand. Now I occasionally use A3 papers when I see need, but still. I will take a notebook tomorrow!
I haven't looked into this, just responding intuitively, but aren't we trained to learn better by writing by hand because of our upbringing. If the next generation stops hand writing and starts typing from early childhood education, wouldn't it be the same for them?
"New research has analyzed brainwave patterns in both children and young adults while they wrote by hand and as they typed on a keyboard. The results revealed distinctly different brain patterns between the activities, leading the researchers to suggest learning is more effective when it is accompanied by handwriting."
That was certainly my experience when going to university. They were phasing in digital classes of sorts, so pressured lecturers to use PowerPoint or similar. I recalled almost nothing from those lectures, as it was impossible to take notes and listen at the same time. And without taking notes I'd forget.
The blackboard ones though, with carefully prepared notes by the lecturer... I'd write it all down, and would hardly ever had to look at them again as it stuck right away. However, I did have to write it down.
There is also scientific evidence that hand-writing down your goals on paper is a positive factor in achieving those goals (this was on a recent episode of huberman lab)
I like the decision, right move judging from what I read about cognitive development in childhood.
On a side note, as a highly gifted person, I found it somewhat amusing and tragic how people tend to cast blame on a school system in general and not on individual cognitive difference in their respective children.
Talking to parents, 90% believe their kids are above average in intelligence. Well, I have serious doubts. ;)
I can attribute a great deal of poor school results due to books and timed or take-home handwritten assignments.
I had a 40lb backpack for school filled with books and notebooks and implements required for class. Forgot a book? Lose a mark.
Random checks on note-taking during class. Forgot your notebook? Lose a mark. Protractor split due to the compression between two books? Lose a mark.
I walked to school on many days. My back hurt permanently.
I write with my left hand. Nobody knows how to teach this. Letters smear into the next. Ball point pens get jammed. Can’t read your handwriting? Lose a mark. Know exactly what you want to write but cant produce it in time? Lose a mark. Hand is cramped from P.E. from doing 30 pull-ups? Lose a mark. Its a pain to think faster than you can write as you watch the clock run out.
When it started being possible to turn in typed assignments or timed tests, life became easier.
The effects were measurable. For instance, paragraphs within essays were crossed out as illegible and removed from the final marks. So for instance if you had to write a 5 paragraph essay, and 1 paragraph was missing due to this, then maximum grade would be a C+ due to missing a conclusion section or introduction or other required section.
> Slides are entirely appropriate, especially if the teacher is teaching the same class multiple times per day.
I have had Maths professors who were teaching the same class for decades. They would pencil it all out on the blackboard. We copied it by hand. This slowed everything down and we got time to digest the content. First questions could be asked and answered.
And yes, we all had laptops, but we kept them in the backpack.
Where I studied, every classroom had a blackboard and a projector, with the rollable white screen just above the board. When you show slides, roll out the screen. When you need the board, either use the portion beside the screen or roll up the screen if you don't need it at all.
When I was in highschool my teachers started getting SmartBoards. Every class then spent some amount of time fiddling with the Smart Board, getting it to work, debugging it. For them to... just not write with a marker on the white board right next to it? It was a worse product for more money.
I actually had hand-writing in school, in Sweden in the late 90s. But since I didn't practice it outside of school, and was such a computer nerd, I can't write good at all now. Whenever I have to sign like 3 copies of a contract, I sign with 3 different signatures.
For a while I had a pen pal and that was very good practice, but it was slow, and painful to write a whole letter. I'd have to keep it up daily.
I don't think they'll be taught "skrivstil"/cursive, I think it's literally going from less iPads where you play Hangman or whatever to learn to read to more reading and writing. Cursive sucks ass, I hated doing that so much.
There is a lot of irony in the replies where most people here are in the business of shoving tech into every remaining open space in our lives whilst preaching it should actually not be part of a child's. I myself am a luddite quite honestly but I don't work in tech (directly) so it's odd for me seeing this sentiment so pervasive on a forum for tech workers.
Is it irony? I think the anti-tech sentiment is more pervasive amongst the people that enable it precisely because those people understand the sausage.
While my own experience and bias would say this is a good thing, because it says "Sweden" I take it (and now my bias) with a grain of salt.
Sweden perform quite significantly worse than the rest of the Nordic countries when it comes to school and things such as PISA scores. I do remember seeing in high school (2007 or so) on TV, how Sweden got a bad score and the education minister flat out denied the suggestions by pisa just to push through their political promises
(smaller classes, which I think was mostly a politically motivated, to get teachers support)
I think you should probably look to Finland, its much better neighbor, when it comes to school policies.
Edit: apparently according to this article[1] the negative trend of declining scores have been reversed since 2016 so who knows, maybe this is a good thing
Finland has been falling in PISA scores and the general consensus seems to be the over reliance on tech in education. The current government has also set less tech in schools as one of their goals. So sure, look st finland since they are going to do the same thing
> As young children went back to school across Sweden last month, many of their teachers were putting a new emphasis on printed books, quiet reading time and handwriting practice and devoting less time to tablets, independent online research
But I think the value is more in writing down your ideas, thought processes, diagrams etc. I don't have a source but I remember reading _something_ about it being a legitimate thing; that it's easier for us to remember and understand something if we've physically had to write it down.
Writing is not moving a pen across paper but learning to wield language. It's been decades since I wrote anything more than a few scribbles using a pen. It's slow. It's clumsy. My hands cramp up. It's literally painful. I don't miss it, at all. Useless skill as far as I'm concerned. I grew up in the seventies and eighties so that was just the way things were done. But that's nearly 40-50 years ago. Doing that right now is backwards.
Why teach people how to mess up their hands and wrists and then not teach then how to use a keyboard properly? Most writing that still matters gets done with those. It's faster, more efficient. A lot easier to produce lots of text. Which is actually a key thing when you are learning to write: you need to write a lot. Having tools tell you when you are getting your grammar and spelling wrong is super helpful. Having a teacher with a red pen is slow and inefficient. Fast feedback loops are great for learning. Getting corrected while you are writing is much better than days/weeks later when your poor overworked teacher gets around to dealing with your writing.
In the same way, I use a kindle. Actual paper books are a relic of the past. I read more than before I had ebook readers. It's so much better. Why limit yourself to books that fit in the tiny little backpack of a kid when you can the whole world of books and the internet at your finger tips? School books are dreadful. You get locked into whatever the school and published deems successful. Some schools get that right but a lot of them just fall for the mediocre drivel that the education publishers shovel out.
Modern schools should embrace technology, AI, and prepare kids for this century; not the last one.
Even though we have calculators, learning to multiply in your head is a valuable skill. Why because you can use it even when the power is down.
Handwriting similarly. You can write even when there is no computer around, or when power is down. I also believe the argument that it enhances motoric-skills.
And reading? Do we really need to learn reading when we can just ask Siri to read it out loud for us?
>Even though we have calculators, learning to multiply in your head is a valuable skill. Why because you can use it even when the power is down.
This argument feels weak, how often does your phone or watch actually reach the point of shutting down due to a drained battery? Pretty much never for me, so I basically have a calculator on my wrist and in my pocket 24/7. Having basic multiplication and specific results/approximations committed to memory is valuable because it can be faster than pulling up a calculator (eg certain powers of 2 as a programmer), but for anything where being precise matters, manual multiplication has been essentially obsolete for me since finishing undergrad (despite being in a very math heavy field now).
Outright being unable to write by hand is obviously a problem, as it's still possible to encounter a system that isn't digital a handful of times a year, but emphasizing quality as strongly as we used to should be mostly on the way out.
We can read much faster than we can speak and there is no reasonable way to have a voice assistant read all the text one encounters daily that isn't on their own device, so there I'd argue that the latter is objectively inferior in every way unlike with writing or mental math, where both sides of the debate have good points.
In some sense machines are taking over reading as well at least partially, and therefore it is imperative that we learn to read, not just let machines read for us.
An example would be reading a post on Facebook which was originally written in a foreign language which we don't understand. Therefore the machine must read it first, and then translate it to us so we don't have to read the original, which we couldn't do anyway.
You're exactly right, but I'm sorry this is the forum for tech skeptics/haters now. That said, I think learning to scribble some notes is still a useful skill, but no need to write pages of essays by hand, it's pointless. And as for paper books, I've gone back and forth. For some reason I enjoy reading paper books more and I can easily share them with friends. I think you do get a better sense of the temporal/spatial structure of the book this way, so I prefer it for non-fiction. But it's still great to be able to download any book in existence as well, I still read mostly ebooks.
There seems to be a very different way of thinking when the human interface device is a computer vs a pen and paper or a book.
I can do some things behind a computer, but some kinds of thinking require me to be away from a computer. Oddly, the shower seems to be a place where I do some of my best thinking.
Don't bring back the old things; make new things that are more tactile. Advance them in new ways. For example, instead of using iPads - invest in advanced e-ink tech to bring better digital books to schools.
The piano example is an exception because, you can't really replace musical instruments.
But mechanical type-writers? Why not just invest in better mechanical keyboards, rather than the cheap membrane ones you see in schools so much?
Swedish parent here. I have not seen any effect from this yet. Hopefully there will be some improvements in time for my youngest kid. A new year in school began last month, and for my oldest kids what "acquiring knowledge primarily from freely available digital sources that have not been vetted for accuracy" means in practice (and if anything, so far it has been worse this last month than ever before): Each child gets a Chromebook. They get assignments through Google Classroom. Typically the assignments are things like "here are 20 questions; find answers!" and they are more or less on their own Googling and reading Wikipedia to figure things out. I noticed for a few assignments they get lists of recommended reading as well, and sometimes links to youtube videos that are relevant. And links to some awful, ad-riddled, quiz-site, for practice, that at least one of the teachers like to link to.
If I understand correctly some of the linked articles and videos are on some paywalled sites containing content specially made for school, so presumably there was some vetting there? When I had a brief look at some articles on subjects I happen to know a bit about I was not particularly impressed though. The printed books they used to have were WAY better.
Not that I am sure things are automatically better on paper. I read 99% ebooks and prefer that to books. But what they get now is not anything like the same books, but digitally, unfortunately. And linking to ad-supported sites, in addition to all the Google-dependencies, makes it worse.
On the positive side, my oldest son quickly figured out how to install Linux on his Chromebook to run games. I do not think they are allowed to do that, but I am not going to read the fine print to find out.
Good decision. Just like with Covid lockdowns. Somehow when you are away from a screen your mind expands, at least for me. Like the screen craves your attention and robs your thoughts. When I have some kind of problem with coding, I just move away from the computer, get a notebook, start scribbling and writing down things and the solution just comes.
Holy fascist washing batman! There's no centre party in the Tidö government, it just has conservatives puppeteer by a far right party founded by neo-Nazis...
What we have in many classrooms is a tech nightmare where tasks are digitized for just the sake of digitizing and attention span is lost, deep learning and concentration is lost and meaning relationships between student / student or student / instructor are diminished.